The Cost and Bandwidth of Wideband Internet Access
"In Manhattan people pay about $30 (£15) a month for a download speed of three megabits per second (Mbps) via a DSL line. Many people are very happy with that, until they realise what is going on elsewhere in the world.
"'In Japan you can get 100 megabits for $35.......If you look at places like Hong Kong and Europe, in many places you can get over 10 megabits from your broadband network.'"
Access: The Case of New York
"In New York state 52% of residents do not have any internet access, especially rural areas and low income families."
Net Neutrality
"The lack of competition has had other consequences. Comcast, the nation's largest residential cable TV and net company was recently accused of interfering with the downloading of video files."
Urban Public WiFi
"Public wi-fi efforts have also been held back. Several city governments have given up or reduced efforts to provide blanket coverage for their residents.
"'This is because they have been worn down with lawsuits and lobbyists working for the telephone companies, who want consumers to rely on expensive cell phone plans to access the net on the go.
"Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore - they all have wi-fi in public areas.'"Slow Progress in Fiber Networks
"Those same companies that are discouraging competition are gradually building the next generation of fibre optic networks.
"They hope to migrate their increasingly frustrated customers. But due to simple logistics, millions of American city dwellers may not get the super fast service for years.
"'Wiring up skyscrapers is a huge problem,' explains Mr Kaplan. 'They're old, they're giant, they're hard to change the wiring in. This has been the big hindrance to getting New York city wired."
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